So, I hear YouTube stuff is getting worse...
For me, it's been a pretty standard thing, continually: 1.) Upload video 2.) Video gets blocked, or corporation decides to take monetization. It could happen immediately or any time down the road. 3.) Submit a dispute 4.) Wait a month and dispute comes back denied. 5.) Challenge the dispute. 6.) Wait a month and the dispute gets denied again. The video gets removed and I get a strike. 7.) Submit a counter-notification. 8.) Risk being sued for what YouTube says is two weeks, but is more like a month. Video goes back up. 9.) Wait until this happens again when an algorithm flags your video. That's the way that it's always been. And there have always been corporations and individuals who abuse this ability, because it only takes like 30 minutes tops to manually send any creator down this road. It wasn't fair, but at least it made some kind of logical sense. Now I'm hearing stories about people like I Hate Everything just being taken down randomly for no actual reason. Which is scary... for all of the reasons. There are many theories as to why this is, from trolls to random computer bugs. It's probably the latter because YouTube only uses people to change the channel layouts every two weeks. The actual jobs that need to be jobs seem to be done by computers. And you think that pulling in over a billion dollars a year, they'd be able to upgrade these things. Google apparently knows my entire psyche profile after three Google searches, so you'd think that YouTube's computers wouldn't fuck up so much. This is what monopolies do The difference between Google as a search engine and YouTube as a video streaming service is that there are other search engines that even the average person could name. We might all use Google, but we can at least namedrop things like Bing or Yahoo. Most people probably couldn't name another video streaming service than YouTube (that isn't made to stream porn). Well maybe you could - like Dailymotion or Zippcast or Vimeo. That's because "a video streaming web service" is not what YouTube has a monopoly on. YouTube has a monopoly over content creators. It's very difficult to find someone with over 100,000 followers who does not post their videos on YouTube. There's a reason for this. I've been tempted to jump ship sometimes, but there's a reason that I don't. Jumping from YouTube to another video streaming service with that amount of content would be career suicide. People have short attention spans, and even going to another website would discourage a large chunk of their followers. From personal experience, no matter which other website that I've posted content on - Dailymotion, Vimeo, or Zippcast - there have been people complaining that the site was inferior or annoying for viewers in some kind of way. You see, this is why Blip used to be the holy grail for video uploaders (until they made stupid decisions that cost them everything). The other websites, they don't pull in the money for things like a steadier, quicker streaming experience. Better frame-rates for their videos. Less bandwidth hogging from their viewers. As much as YouTube makes stupid decision upon stupid decision, actually watching a video on YouTube is seldom an annoying experience in itself unless my own internet is bunk. By the way, this is one of the reasons that I'm going to continue supporting Zippcast with some of my reviews. I understand that they've got a lot of issues... but they need people to watch videos with these issues so they can keep generating ad revenue and improve their website. Also, they don't randomly delete my channel at absolute random like Vimeo. What I'm trying to say is that YouTube will keep abusing the people who upload on their site for a long time because they have a monopoly: not on video hosting websites; but a monopoly of viewers. That monopoly of viewers is held there by the major players (the people with over a million subscribers). And they stay because YouTube has the monopoly of viewers. If, for example, Pewdiepie were to go to Dailymotion (who doesn't pay any ad revenue) it could largely end his career. Look at what going on television did for Fred, and that was fucking television. It's a vicious cycle that can't be broken unless someone with a lot of money specifically wants to compete with YouTube (a product that essentially has a gridlock on the market). So what can the average content creator do? A lot of people would say "you shouldn't try to make a living on YouTube," but I don't really think that's helpful in any sense. If you've got any kind of business online, you've probably got a YouTube channel to add to it. Hell, most new businesses seem to have YouTube channels of their own where they actually post stuff. And even if you're not using YouTube as a job, you probably don't want to be treated like this. The problem comes that if you're just beginning to make enough revenue to live off of YouTube (I'd say between 100k - 250k subscribers), leaving for another channel would be absolutely impossible. In fact, it would probably be logically impossible up until you've got a million subscribers. And once you've got a million, YouTube begins treating you well (you even get an actual trophy when that happens) and hey... you've got a million subscribers and you're making a lot of money... why the hell would you leave? (Working at YouTube seems to have more in common with other jobs than I originally thought...) Let's start with some things that you should be doing as a content creator anyway: * Backup all of your videos: When you upload a video, don't delete it. Put it away in an external hard drive or somewhere you can find it, but it won't get in the way. I even keep my scripts that I've used. * Get other social media: Twitter, facebook, tumblr, deviant art maybe. Google+... actually maybe not that last one. No one uses Google+. Just have some way to tell people if your channel's gone under, and tell people you have these in your videos. Twitter works the best for this specific purpose, but each of them has their pros and cons and communities. * Consider alternative sources of revenue: I have a patreon account, which I'd recommend for any content creator. It (usually) won't make as much money for you as ad revenue would, but it doesn't cost anyone anything that they don't want to spend. It's also a life saver for those times when a computer matches copyright on your video and the people behind it don't want to drop it for a month. There are other things you can do to, like commissions. Other things that you might consider: * Join a MCN (Multi Channel Network): '''I personally don't recommend these. It used to be that they got some revenue, but they'd protect you from copyright shit. However, after YouTube jacked the system, the only kind of benefit is that you have a quicker way of talking to google. * '''Really get invested in the YouTube community: Do more collaborations, talk to people more, go to panels, participate in the comments. More people will notice your absence when you get brutally murdered... I mean deleted off YouTube, and perhaps more people would be able to make a larger splash. * Put exclusive content on another website: I... wouldn't recommend this thing unless you're totally paranoid that this thing would happen to you. For example, The League of Super Critics originally really cut down their reviews before they placed them on YouTube. You needed to go to the actual website to get the full experience. It's a much... safer way of jumping off of YouTube cold turkey. And that's all I've got. Is this the first step to being conquered by robots? Because it's way worse than Isaac Asimov could have ever predicted. Category:Miscellaneous